First Congregational Church of Kittery Point, United Church of Christ March 14, 2010
Sermon—“The uttermost depths of the human situation”—Rev. Jeffrey M. Gallagher, Pastor
Lent IV; Based on: John 19:25-27 & Matthew 27:45-49
In his controversial book The Last Temptation of Christ, author Nikos Kazantzakis describes the scene of Jesus being crucified—with Simon of Cyrene watching nearby—in this way:
“He lifted his head and looked around him. The world seemed to have fainted. Deathly pale, it was now just barely visible in the bluish darkness. The heads of the people had vanished and only their eyes—black holes—bored through the air. A thick flock of crows which had scented the blood and rushed to Golgotha now fled in terror. A feeble gasp of complaint descended from the cross, and the Cyrenian, tying his heart into a knot so that he would not weep, lifted his eyes and looked. Suddenly he uttered a cry. Jesus was not being nailed to the cross by gypsies! No, a multitude of angels had come down from heaven, holding hammers and nails in their hands. They flew around Jesus, swung the hammers happily and nailed the hands and feet; some tightly bound the victim’s body with stout cord so that he would not fall; and a small angel with rosy cheeks and golden curls held a lance and pierced Jesus’ heart.
“What is this?” murmured the Cyrenian, trembling. “God himself, God himself is crucifying him!”
And then—never in his life had the Cyrenian experienced such intense fear or pain—a great, heart-rending cry, full of complaint, tore the air from earth to heaven.
“Eli . . . Eli . . .”
The sufferer was unable to continue. He wanted to but could not: he had no more breath.
The Crucified inclined his head—and fainted.”[1]
It is a powerful, although really not that unique, portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. And as such it would make a very fitting end to Kazantzakis’ novel about Jesus’ life if the novel ended there. But it doesn’t. No, on the next page, Kazantzakis actually begins with the line: “His eyelids fluttered with joy and surprise. This was not a cross; it was a huge tree reaching from earth to heaven. Spring had come: blossoms covered the entire tree . . . .”[2]
From there the novel continues on—for approximately another 50 pages—during which time Jesus realizes that he wasn’t crucified because it was all a dream, he becomes intimate with Mary Magdalene, who later dies, and Judas calls him a coward and traitor for not willingly allowing himself to be crucified.
It’s during this exchange with Judas that Kazantzakis suddenly shifts gears, writing: “He tried with all his might to discover where he was, who he was and why he felt pain. He wanted to complete his cry, to shout Lama Sabacthani . . . He attempted to move his lips but could not. He grew dizzy and was ready to faint. He seemed to be hurling downward and perishing.
But suddenly, while he was falling and perishing, someone down on the ground must have pitied him, for a reed was held out in front of him, and he felt a sponge soaked in vinegar rest against his lips and nostrils. He breathed in deeply the bitter smell, revived, swelled his breast, looked at the heavens and uttered a heart-rending cry: Lama Sabacthani!”[3]
And it’s from there that Kazantzakis finishes his novel, just a few sentences later, with Jesus dying, leaving open the possibility that resurrection was very likely to follow.
So what’s with this tangent on the cross, then, you’re probably wondering? Well, this is Kazantzakis’ chronicling of Jesus’ last temptation by Satan, as Kazantzakis suggests that Jesus was tempted—and somewhat gave in to this temptation—of seeing what his life would be like if he removed himself from the cross, and did not fulfill the mission that he had come to on earth.
As such, you don’t need me to tell you why this novel has been deemed so controversial. People were not happy because such a depiction made Jesus look too human, and not enough like the Messiah, the figure of the Christ. However, despite this criticism, I believe that Kazantzakis’ portrayal is one that we need to keep in mind as we turn our attention to the third and fourth words Jesus utters from the cross.
Now, since Kazantzakis frames the end of his novel with Jesus’ words “Eli, Eli, lema sabacthani?” I think it makes sense for us to start our conversation with that Matthew text—or Jesus’ fourth word from the cross. So the words Jesus utters here, in Aramaic, are helpfully translated by our gospel writer as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Not necessarily the words we’d expect to hear from Jesus, confidently fulfilling his mission on earth, are they?
No, these are “terrible, frightening words . . . . Dereliction, loss and abandonment, words of doubt, [are] hardly the words that one expects from the Son of God, the Messiah, the Revelation of God to God.”[4] And yet they’re the ones we get, leading one author to claim “that of all the words of Jesus from the cross, we most identify with [these].”[5] So how come?
Well, I think we can identify with Jesus’ words, because we’ve been there—not literally hanging on a cross, of course, but I would imagine that most of us have been in a position where we’ve felt abandoned by God, or at least left wondering where God was at some time in our lives. September 11th. The day an unexpected diagnosis was offered to a loved one. The week that if anything could go wrong, it did go wrong. The night the phone call came to say that our beloved wouldn’t survive until the morning.
We have all had those moments when—maybe we haven’t uttered aloud—but at least we’ve wondered where God was in the midst of tragedy and heart-ache. We’ve questioned why a loving God would allow such atrocities to happen and why God would not intervene to write a different ending.
We’ve done this. Our ancestors have done this—after all, the words Jesus quotes are actually from the beginning of Psalm 22, as the Psalmist laments a similar feeling of loss and abandonment in his life. But yet we don’t expect to hear these words from Jesus. If he was sent to the earth, by God, to live and die like a human, then we don’t expect to hear Jesus wondering why God has left him alone to die—in much the same way that some might not expect to hear Jesus fantasizing about being intimate with Mary Magdalene and choosing a different path than crucifixion, as Kazantzakis writes.
As such, people of faith have tried to explain Jesus’ fourth word for ages. Some will suggest that since Jesus utters the first verse of the Psalm, that he “was, in fact, repeating [the entire] Psalm to himself . . . . [because while it might begin] in complete dejection, it ends in soaring triumph.”[6] An interesting theory, yet I concur with one author who writes: “It is an attractive suggestion; but on a cross a man does not repeat poetry to himself, even the poetry of a psalm.”[7]
Others have argued that “this final cry [is] evidence that Jesus lost his faith in God and looked back on his life as a total failure.”[8] Again, possible, but I find this hard to believe because Jesus’ faith was so strong. Plus the fact, had it been the case that Jesus really did lose his faith in the end, wouldn’t the gospel writers have tried to cover that up, and not include it in their story of Jesus’ life and ministry?
So with these options not likely possibilities, I take this line as one which “firmly reminds us of [Jesus’] real humanity.”[9] In other words, we are seeing raw human emotion here, from a man who was in excruciating pain, and was wondering, like any human might, if God had abandoned him as he was living out his final moments on earth. It’s an important question that we’ll come back to.
But first a word needs to be said about that other word Jesus utters. While perhaps not as attention-grabbing as Jesus’ fourth word, the words he utters to his mother Mary, and John, his most beloved disciple, need to be briefly considered. For Jesus says to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” It’s a curious way to address his mother, most will admit, but not uncommon for Jesus (as he addressed her at the wedding in Cana in the same way).
His words are likely calling Mary’s attention to John, the beloved disciple, as Jesus says to her, “now that I am dying you need to think of John as your son.” In turn he says the same thing to John—“Here is your mother”—as John will now need to care for Mary as he would his own mother. Again, a lot could be said about these words that we don’t have time to say today—including the fact that this is Jesus passing the torch of his ministry from himself to his disciples—but the one thing we do need to see is that scene is one in which Jesus, again, displays his humanness.
For this is Jesus, dying on the cross, in pain, and what comes to mind but the “thought of the loneliness of his mother in the days ahead . . . . To the end of the day, even on the Cross, Jesus was thinking more of the sorrows of others than his own.”[10] In other words, because Jesus was truly human—and had formed these relationships while on earth—he couldn’t just let those feelings go, even in his last, dying moments.
So what are we to make of all this talk of Jesus’ humanness, then? Well, historically, people have tried to shy away from this notion that Jesus was fully human. Claiming that he never sinned, that he never felt temptation, that he never experienced the wants, desires, and needs that we, as humans, experience, many have tried to suggest that as the Messiah, Jesus somehow stood above the rest of humanity while walking and living here on earth. The plethora of criticism surrounding Kazantzakis’ novel, and the attempts to redeem Jesus’ words about being forsaken by God, are prime examples of this.
But I, for one, don’t have a problem with Jesus being human. More than that, I actually appreciate the fact that he was human. I appreciate the fact that Jesus looked, acted, and experienced life like we do. I appreciate this because it shows me, as one author writes, that “Jesus [plumbed] the uttermost depths of the human situation, so that there might be no place that we might go where he has not been before.”[11]
In other words, if God sent Jesus to the earth to live—not like one of us, but like some super human—then it would make me question whether or not God understands what it’s like to live as we do. I would wonder if God understands the grief we feel when we lose a loved one, the physical pain that can accompany life and death, the temptations and stresses that befall us everyday, the musings about where God is in tragedy. But knowing that Jesus experienced this, gives me the confidence that God will understand—when we cry to God in anguish or when we feel abandoned.
But the key is to keep crying. You see, Jesus may have felt abandoned, but still he cried out to God. He cried out saying “my God.” This was a “rare and . . . . especially intimate form of address based on close personal attachment.”[12] This shows me that even though Jesus might not have known exactly where God was—due to the intensity of the moment—deep down he had faith to believe that God was there, and listening. And the message, for us, is that when the chips are down, we need to have faith to believe the same.
Now admittedly this does paint an interesting picture of God—it paints the picture of a God who does not, always, miraculously solve the world’s problems; “the kind of God who does not always work the world to our benefit, the kind of God who, when it gets dark, doesn’t immediately switch on the lights but rather comes and hangs out with us, on the cross, in the dark.”[13] It’s a picture that not everyone is comfortable with.
Yet rather than make me uncomfortable, this image actually puts me at ease. I’m actually okay with not understanding it all. I’m okay with God not solving all the world’s problems, but challenging us to work at solving them. I’m okay because texts like this remind me that even when things get tough, and I may feel alone, the reality is, I’m not. And I don’t know about you, but I can readily put my faith in a God who says, “You might not understand all my ways and I might not fix all your problems, but I’ve been where you are, and I’m going to stay here with you, no matter where you might be going next, and we’ll get through this together.” Amen.
© 2010 by Rev. Jeffrey M. Gallagher, All Rights Reserved.
[1] Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p.443.
[2] Ibid., p.444.
[3] Ibid., p.495.
[4] William H. Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), p.40.
[5] Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2004), p.60.
[6] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of Matthew Volume 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1975), p.368.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Douglas R. A. Hare, Interpretation, Matthew (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), p.322.
[9] Ibid., p.323.
[10] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of John Volume 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1975), p.257.
[11] Barclay, Matthew p.369.
[12] J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IV, Ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 639-1280, p.762.
[13] Willimon, p.45.
